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It’s been a few weeks since i posted a blog on Wuthering but at least i do not have myself to entirely blame, the process of buying a new house…and then deciding what to fill it with is not necessarily the easiest thing to be dealing with at the weekends alongside recipe developing and photos. If you’re nosy and love a bit of interior and design snooping you can see my Pinterest Boards on what we’re trying to achieve, let me know what you think of the Kitchen plans, i feel i may have convinced hubby that the ongoing trend of copper and teal is indeed essential ;)!

After coming home night after night after working all day and going through numerous homeware online shops and putting confirmed items on a spreadsheet ready to buy after exchange everyday is tiresome but, would rather the planning be over with so we can just get home to the house and fill it with wonderful things.

As you can imagine from all of the above, dinners have been stressful so we’ve found an undying love for things like pesto which can be made up in advance, and is so wonderfully adaptable for any type of meal. This dish can be made in a variety of ways, with chicken thighs for a midweek meal, in chicken breasts for a romantic dinner for two or at the weekend with all the family stuffed into a large chicken for an alternative spring roast.

Of course without the meat, this pesto is great tossed through steamed new potatoes or in a potato salad, pasta, rice. Fresh, tangy and delicious, i highly recommend you give it a try!

Gluten Free Goats Cheese and Chunky Almond Pesto Stuffed Chicken

Serves 2.

I’ve based this recipe on the thighs version but you can use the same amount for Chicken Breasts but i would double for stuffing a whole chicken.

A bunch of Watercress and/or Rocket (about 35g)

8 Large Basil Leaves

2-3 Large Garlic Cloves

20ml Rapeseed or Olive Oil

30g of Roughly Chopped Almonds

Salt and Pepper

4 Chicken Thighs

50g Goats Cheese cut into 4 pieces

4 Slices of Parma Ham or Proscuitto (Optional)

Preheat oven to 200 degrees C.

Pop the watercress, rocket, basil and garlic cloves into a food processor and whizz until well combined.

Add in the rapeseed or olive oil and give a small further blitz.

Mix in the roughly chopped almonds and season to taste with salt and pepper. Lemon zest is also great to add here.

Gluten Free Pancake Birthday

‘Twas my Birthday week last week and i found myself mostly making gluten free pancakes (like above), eating way too many sugary things and drinking champagne cocktails at Haus Bar in Bristol, until i couldn’t remember how many i had. It was a fantastic week and my husband Rob put the icing on the cake by taking me to see Cats at the Hippodrome and going to the Lido to have Tapas- also very gluten free aware which is good to know.

Aside feeling absolutely huge after my week of indulgence, i’ve also been left a bit skint through no fault of mine own. I now understand how deadly £8 cocktails can be in every sense. So have been cooking alot of frugal meals as i wait for pay day. I came over this recipe for flatbreads on the good food website and after making it once i thought it needed a bit of tweaking as i felt they did come out quite dense, a bit bland and turned quite dry quickly. I was surprised at how cheap these were to make so thought it was worthy of a blog post.

There are many gluten free ready made pitta breads/naan’s at the supermarket that i truly can’t justify paying £2.50 for 4 of and some which i find a bit disappointing if i am honest. So here we are.. adjust the spicy levels as you feel necessary and of course you could omit them completely and add Rosemary and a bit of Olive oil if you’re feeling in more of a charcuterie mood instead!

Apologies also for the dim nighttime photos, am adjusting into freelance full time work for a few months!

Gluten Free Spicy Chilli Flatbread or Pizza Base

(Makes 4 large or 8 small Flat Breads, depending on how big you roll them. Adapted from Good Food Recipe here)

I’m also keen to try this out as a pizza base as i feel it could work fantastically. Simple cook them the same way on one side, pop your toppings on and put into a 180 degree oven for 10-15 mins. If doing just cheese and garlic, pop it under the grill!

400g Gluten Free Plain Flour (I used Doves Farm)

1/2 Teaspoon of Xanthan gum

3 and a half Teaspoons of Gluten Free Baking Powder

1 Teaspoon of Cayenne Pepper

1 and a half Teaspoons of Ground Cumin

1 Teaspoon of Dried Chilli Flakes

Salt and Pepper

300ml Full fat plain Yoghurt

100ml Tepid Water

Pop the flour, Xanthan Gum, Baking Powder, Cayenne Pepper, Ground Cumin, Chilli Flakes and Salt and Pepper into a bowl and whisk around until well distributed.

Add 300ml of Plain yoghurt to 100ml of Tepid water and stir. Pour this bit by bit into the flour spice mixture. Use a cold spoon to mix together until you reach a good consistency; the mixture should not stick to your fingers but should feel almost dumpling-like but springy to the touch.

Heat a Frying pan to a high heat – no oil or butter is needed. Roll out your first flatbread – i find the thinner you can get them the crispier they will be, it’s purely down to preference. Dust each side of the flatbread with gluten free flour before transferring to the pan. Cook until bubbles form and parts are looking brown underneath. Flip and cook onto the other side. Transfer to a hot plate whilst you cook more.

If you have any dough leftover this will keep well in the fridge for 2 days in clingfilm. Take out of the clingfilm and bring it to room temperature before cooking again otherwise it will be very sticky to handle.

Fresh Gluten Free Pasta .. Mmm.

After going Gluten Free to aid my IBS pains and troubles, pasta was one of those foods i really loved to make and eat. I was actually very satisfied with the gluten free alternatives such as Doves Farm- in particular the gluten free brown rice penne, which is simply wonderful with spicy chilli tomato sauce and smothered in parmesan. If you are a subscriber to this blog you may know that i truly love my comfort food- to me, food should make you happy in every way, and that doesn’t mean it has to be unhealthy. In fact, having something like this recipe up your sleeve is very handy when there nothing left in the cupboard and everyone loves a staple solution.

Fresh Chickpea pasta is a different consistency from dried gluten free pasta, it’s got more of a bite, tastes mildly nutty and is also very filling; it has a fair bit of protein in it so you will find that you won’t have to dress it up with a meaty sauce. Stick with something simple like Lemon, Olive Oil, Pine nuts and Spinach or make some ravioli and stuff with feta or ricotta. My favourite though would be to serve this Chickpea and Sage pasta with Roasted soft Butternut squash in Chilli Oil. Perfect. Adding Sage into the dough gives it a really unusual twist and it tastes even more fresh, you can of course take it out or substitute it for other herbs!

Gluten Free Fresh Chickpea and Sage Pasta Recipe

Serves 2 (If very hungry Double this recipe!)

When rolling out your pasta ensure that you roll it out VERY THIN. Either a very strong man or a pasta machine will help you achieve this, as you can see my pasta in the picture was a bit on the thick side- (as this was the third pasta attempt and i got a bit tired- hehe).

100g Chickpea Flour (And extra for dusting)

1 Medium Egg (around 70g)

2 tsp of Water

5-6 Fresh Sage Leaves minced finely

Salt

Get a clean surface ready and dust with some Chickpea Flour.

Measure out 100g of chickpea flour and pop this straight onto the clean surface.

Make a well and crack the egg into the center of the flour and begin to bind using scoop motions with your hands. Ensure all the flour meets the egg and beginning to work the mixture until a nice dough has formed. If it is stiff, add a tsp of water and knead again. Repeat until soft enough to roll.

Leave the dough to rest at room temperature for a few minutes and finely chop your sage leaves until desired consistently- you don’t want it too big that it breaks the dough.

Dust down the surface with more chickpea flour and begin to roll the dough out with a rolling pin. Roll out once and then add some of the sage leaves, fold in half and roll out again and add more sage leaves. Continue this process until all sage has been added. Either transfer this to the pasta machine or continue to roll out very thinly into a square.

To make ravioli cut out two equal sized squares, make sure the dough is rolled very thinly. Pop some of the filling you are using in the very center of one sqaure, ensuring not to burst the pasta with too much, and press over the the other square tightly pinning all the edges.

For long pasta, tagliatelle style, make sure to roll out very thinly and before cutting into 2cm width long lines, dust down beneath the dough to ensure it does not stick when transferring to cook.

Boil up water and add a teaspoon of sea salt. Make sure the sea salt dissolves then cook the pasta for 2-4 minutes. You may wish to do a test piece beforehand to ensure correct cooking time.

When Honeybuns release a new Gluten Free cake, product or new recipe i always get excited, their treats are always well thought out, stylish and now, will always be gluten free- with the change of the gluten free oats in their flapjacks! Something which shows that they really care about their wider audience.

I was sent through their new Gluten Free Cake Mix to try which makes a plain sponge and can be altered to suit any occasion with the handy ‘idea’ leaflet which is enclosed in the tube. This, and the tube itself was so stunningly designed, that i really didn’t want to throw it away. So it’s being kept in my cupboard as a measuring cup holder. These cake mixes would be an excellent gift idea for any lover of baking.

The cake mix itself is so simple, two small bags that you combine in a bowl, add two eggs and melted butter and you’re off to gluten free heaven. I made the Lemon Loaf Cake option which was on the handy leaflet, i added the zest of 1 lemon to the mix and a teaspoon of oil. Popped it in the oven for 40 minutes and hey presto- foolproof cake. The kind of cake i love. I then followed the recipe for syrup and topped it with some icing sugar and lemon juice drizzle icing. My hubby’s favourite. Honeybuns also informed me that if you want to make this dairy free too just ‘substitute the butter with the same quantities of soya margarine or oil.”

This is such a good mix to just have in the cupboard, and although it’s a little expensive (£4.99) , the ingredients are very good quality as well as the instructions and packaging that would be a waste to throw out! This will be a thankful addition to my ever increasing drama of what to get people for christmas, as it caters to all sorts of audiences.

For more details on where to buy Honeybuns products please hop on over to their website.

This product was sent to me complimentary to review but did no way impact on my opinion of the product.

If you are a keen baker like myself, it’s incredibly frustrating when you get the baking urge to find out that your food cupboard really isn’t in the baking mood. No eggs, no butter, no mix of flours. After a weekend of actually doing a spring clean of my food cupboards it was looking rather bare, but instead of shunning away the idea of having no tasty treats to nibble on over the weekend i took this as part of a challenge to make cookies with what little i did have in the cupboard. If it wasn’t for the 75grams of Almond Butter these cookies probably wouldn’t have been made, so thankfully my husband didn’t nab the last tablespoons for his toast that morning!

I call these cookies, but they are rather a mix between a cookie and a cakey biscuit. There is no snap but rather a nice scone like texture on the outside and soft in the middle. These are perfect as a substitute for that small glutened biscuit served with tea in coffee shops or in restaurants at the end of the meal.

I added a few gluten free oats to give them a more rustic texture and cereal taste -which goes perfectly with honey but if you can’t tolerate any oats at all, simple replace them with flour. The lime zest is optional but i really feel it gives it an usual zesty twist but feel free to experiment with adding lemon or orange instead:)

This is a great recipe for those avoiding dairy, egg’s and gluten and the honey also acts as a nice alternative to white cane sugar.

Mix your Flour, Xanthan Gum, Oats, Sea Salt and Baking Powder into a bowl and give this a good whisk round until completely combined.

In a measuring jug, mix the Almond butter, Honey and Vanilla Extract and give it a good mix around. You can do this in a separate small bowl but i find using the jug easier to measure as i go along.

Pour the butter and honey mixture into the flour mixture and mix in with cold hands until fully combined. The mixture should be doughy with a floury texture still.

Grate in the zest of 1 Lime and mix into the mixture well with a cold spoon.

Shape out small tablespoon sized balls in your hands and lay these out on to a sheet. Press down slightly with the back of a spoon or fork. No need to worry too much about spacing as these will not expand much but keep about a 2cm distance apart from each one.

Grate over the remaining Lime Zest and Pop them in the oven for 10 mins, they should be just browning on top. Remove from the oven and leave to cool completely before removing.

A Lovely accompaniment with any Herbally tea, especially Raspberry or Cranberry flavours.

Birthday Cake for Summer

Almost every family occasion i get assigned the cake making task, and unusual really though, as making a cake to suit our families allergy needs when we’re all together (gluten, peanut/almond free) is really not difficult; but i can imagine if you’ve never done it before that you wouldn’t know where to start apart from Google it.

This cake was inspired by those fluffy white cakes that you see on American blogs and websites like Martha Stewarts which looks so incredible, layers upon layers – that look so airy and light much like Angel Food Cake which i adore. As this was my brothers birthday his one major request was for it to be Lemon and with not too much icing. I’ve also gone through a phase of not really liking too much icing on cake, mainly very sugary tasting thick icing. So instead i opted for coating just the top with Lemon Cream cheese frosting topped with coconut shavings and Lemon Zest. If you love your icing and the white cloud cake look i would highly recommend doing double the quantity and coating the whole thing!

The cake is light, airy and extremely lemony pushed together with the lemon curd. Another glorious idea would be to sandwich the cake with just lemon curd and fresh whipped cream topped with icing sugar, but as this cake needed to be transported to a hot sunny BBQ location this option wasn’t ideal unless i layered it there and then.

This cake is a very versatile celebration cake recipe and can either be done as one /two/three layers just halve or halve and add the quantities however you please.

The whole family devoured it at the Birthday BBQ, and just as my little niece Lara was getting tired and a bit troublesome, as soon as she ate a bit of this cake all was better again…and that’s exactly what all cake is meant to do in the first place. Remedy all.

Gluten Free Lemon & CoconutChiffon Cake

Serves 8 (Generous slices, 2 Layer 9 inch cake) Gluten Free.

Instead of the cream cheese frosting you could layer this cake with lemon curd and fresh whipped cream.

For Dairy free you could layer with lemon curd and top with Icing sugar

Cake

6 Large Eggs Separated

220g Caster Sugar, plus an extra 1 tbsp.

A pinch of salt

100ml Flavourless Oil

Juice and Zest of 2 Lemons

220g Rice or Corn Flour

1/2 a tsp of Baking Powder

1/2 tsp. Bicarbonate of Soda

½ tsp. White Wine Vinegar

1 Jar of Lemon Curd

20 Grams of Desiccated Coconut

Icing

(For just the top layer, double if icing all around)

300g Full Fat Cream Cheese

Squeeze of Lemon Juice and zest of 1 lemon

Icing Sugar (at least 100g but add more if necessary)

Coconut shavings to decorate

The Cake method

Grease and line two 9 inch deep baking tins and set aside. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees fan.

Put the Egg yolks, Sugar, Oil, Salt, Lemon Juice and Zest into a bowl and whisk together thoroughly until combined.

Use a sieve and sift in the flour, baking powder and bicarbonate of soda and use a spatular to fold this into the egg mixture slowly. Set aside.

In an Electric mixer whizz together your egg whites until they form soft peaks, add in a tablespoon of caster sugar and continue whizzing till firm peaks form- you must be able to put the bowl over your head without it falling! Add in the white wine vinegar and whizz once more for 2 seconds.

Fold your egg white mixture into your lemon batter mixture with a spatula, slowly folding until completely combined- it should be one solid colour.

Separate your mixture between the two cake tins and pop straight into the preheated oven for 20-25 mins.

Do not open the oven until 20 mins has passed or it will cause the cake layers to sink.

Remove your layers from the oven when golden brown and you can remove a toothpick cleanly.

Leave the cakes to cool in their tins while you make the icing.

The Icing Method

Mix the cream cheese, icing sugar, 10 grams of the desiccated coconut, lemon zest and juice in a bowl with a cold spoon. Do not over beat or it will become a bit runny. Pop in the fridge until ready to ice.

When the cakes are cool, add lemon curd to the top of one layer and sprinkle over the 10grams left of desiccated coconut. Get a cold spatula and ice the top with the cream cheese frosting and decorate with coconut shavings and more lemon zest!

Cherry Addiction

For those of you who have been following my blog for a while you will have realised that i have become somewhat addicted to the cherry. Cherry sweets, cherry cakes, cherry drinks, cherry coloured tops… much like my friend Abby who’s always been a cherry addict. It seems when i’m coming up with sweet recipes nowadays that i just can’t help but not include the wonderful fruit. I love how they are sweet on biting but they have a sour-ish core on the pip, which i generally suck for far too long than is necessary.

My friend abby had bought me some Morello cherry cordial which is absolutely delicious with ice and lots of sparkling water. It’s flavour is so sweet and distinctive that you don’t really need more than 2 teaspoons to really appreciate the drink and is a nice thing to have about if you’re trying to avoid too much sugar. After hearing that you could warm this cordial up for a hot drink, it got me thinking on how to incorporate this cordial into recipes (as i am now fully stocked, as you can imagine).

And what better way than to have it every morning? Or as a cheeky dessert..

Granola is stupidly easy to make, and although it may be slightly high in fat, in small quantities it’s nutritious as as a filling snack or breakfast addition. I’m a big fan of having this with Frozen Yoghurt.. sublime.

Spicing it up…

It’s been nice to see a bit of sun in Bristol popping up now and again, and it’s even given us the opportunity to get out and start a few BBQ’s in the back garden- How very nice of Mr Sun! Although i never really thought BBQ’ing with cats would be an issue, it seems very difficult (as a team of two) to ensure the cats don’t burn their puddies or eat our food whilst we’re prepping and getting ready for a garden feast. Miko is the hunger machine of our two cats, and he will literally eat anything- as i recently discovered him dragging a roasted red pepper along the ground…

This recipe wasn’t part of our BBQ at the time but i feel would make a great accompaniment to some BBQ’d Lemon and herby fish or chicken with some corn on the cob on the side. It was made rather last minute in an attempt to spice up our regular favourite – Chicken wrapped in Parma Ham, of which my husband Rob really cannot resist taking off the weekly menu.

The lemon zest gives it a nice tang, but not so much that it overpowers but really goes well with the smokey paprika, i reckon you could mix it up further with Lime zest for a complete citrus touch. Whatever you have in to hand in your pantry really :)

Paprika, Garlic & Lemon Zest Mash

Equally i think this would work well with chickpeas as well as potatoes, if you’re looking for a healthier alternative.

3-5 heaped teaspoons of Paprika (Dependent on taste and for a dash on top)

Zest of 1/2 a Lemon (finely grated)

Salt and Pepper

Peel and rinse your potatoes thoroughly under cold water once or twice until some of the starch has been removed.

Pop your potatoes/chickpeas in a saucepan with some cold salted water and bring to the boil. Cook on a medium heat until you can put a knife through them. (Cook the precooked chickpeas until they are hot.)

Drain your potatoes/chickpeas and season with salt and pepper.

Pop the saucepan back on the heat and add the milk/ Olive oil until it becomes hot (but not bubbling)

Add back in your potatoes/chickpeas into the milk with the minced garlic and butter, and start mashing with a potato masher or -as John Torode does on Masterchef- use a fork!

When you’ve got most of the lumps out, or have a smoothish consistency, add in the Paprika, Lemon Zest and more salt and pepper and give it a good mix around.

If you fancy, dash a bit of extra paprika on top.

Feel free to add more of anything to get it to your tastes, i personally like to add a bit more paprika than usual, and sometimes some cayenne pepper for a kick :)

A heck of a lot of stuff is happening in the Wuthering Bites world, including the planning of my Gluten Free pop up restaurant in Bristol with the SupperThyme gang. We should have a date very soon, so as soon as i know i will let you know! We’re trying to make the menus as allergy free as possible, and if we can’t get dairy free, egg free down by the first one i intend to by the next one.

As i have been so busy i have been resorting to very quick meals, and although this recipe wasn’t planned it turned out so well that i thought i’d share it with you as it makes such a good quick lunch or dinner idea.

Aside from the carbs, it also makes a very healthy one, alkaline power foods at their best! The garlic breadcrumbs really give the crunch it needs if you’re being frugal or can’t get round to buying any meat one week. Enjoy :)

Lemon, Chilli, SpinachPasta with Garlic Breadcrumbs.

Serves 2

250g of Gluten Free Pasta (I used Doves Farm)

2 Slices of Gluten Free Bread wizzed in a food processor to crumbs

2 Garlic Cloves

Black Pepper and Salt

Glug of Olive Oil

1 Chilli

Bunch of Spinach

1 Lemon

Parmasen (Optional)

1. Put your gluten free pasta onto boil.

2. Pop your wizzed breadcrumbs into a frying pan with a glug of olive oil. Grate on the garlic and add a touch of salt and pepper to season. Fry the breadcrumbs on a medium heat until they are golden. Take off the heat and set aside.

3. Chop your chilli finely.

4. Once the pasta is how you like it, drain and set aside.

5. Fry your chilli and spinach in some olive oil in a frying pan, as the spinach starts to wilt add in your pasta.

6. Squeeze the whole lemon over the pasta adding some zest too.

7. Finally season with salt and pepper and parmasen and mix in the garlic breadcrumbs.

Dreaming of Summer in what is supposed to be Spring. This cold snap we’ve been experiencing in the U.K has really got to me. When it’s Christmas i love it to be cold, freezing in fact, so that you’re forced … Continue reading →